NHL ROUNDUP : Montreal Sentiment Lasts Only So Long

To begin the night in Montreal, they stood and cheered Mario Lemieux, a hometown boy who had come back to play for the first time in two seasons.

To end the night, they stood and cheered Patrick Roy, the Canadiens’ goalie who stopped him and the rest of the Pittsburgh Penguins in a 4-1 victory Saturday.

Roy made 26 saves, including six off shots by Lemieux.

“I was hoping to have a big game,” Roy said. “We owed it to (Coach) Jacques Demers because he gave us time off, and then we didn’t play that well in Tampa Bay this week.”

Brian Bellows scored two goals, Vincent Damphousse got another and John LeClair scored into an empty net with 36 seconds to play for Montreal.

Jaromir Jagr finally beat Roy at 15:00 of the third period.

The Canadiens were given four days off in Florida, then lost, 4-1, to the Lightning on Thursday with Les Kuntar in the net.

Roy made the difference against the free-wheeling Penguins.

Lemieux, who missed 52 games this season because of a chronic back ailment, played for the third time in the last five games. The four-time league scoring champion made some impressive rushes, but was clearly not at his best.

The Canadiens have won eight of their last 10 games. They moved past Pittsburgh into a tie for first place in the tight Northeast Division with idle Boston, which has a game in hand.

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Toronto 3, Edmonton 2--Todd Gill scored the 200th goal of his career and Doug Gilmour had three assists to lead the Maple Leafs at home.

Dave Andreychuk and Glenn Anderson had the other goals for Toronto. Doug Weight and Luke Richardson scored for Edmonton, 1-8-2 in its last 11 road games.

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Hartford 4, New York Rangers 2--Andrew Cassels broke a tie with 34 seconds to play at Hartford, then assisted on Pat Verbeek’s empty-net goal with six seconds left as the Whalers stunned the league-leading Rangers.

Hartford snapped a five-game home ice winless streak and won for only the fourth time in 17 games (4-11-3).

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New York Islanders 4, Ottawa 0--Ron Hextall stopped 37 shots for his second shutout of the season and four different scorers helped the Islanders at Uniondale, N.Y.

Hextall extended Ottawa’s scoreless streak to 134 minutes 45 seconds and streak without a victory to 12 games (0-9-3).

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New Jersey 5, Tampa Bay 4--John MacLean scored twice and set up what proved to be a game-winning goal by Bobby Holik as the Devils withstood a late rally at East Rutherford, N.J.

The victory snapped a three-game winless streak (0-2-1).

New Jersey is unbeaten (4-0-1) against the Lightning.